Page 86 of Scythe & Sparrow
With one final look at Rose, I turn and leave.
SCRIPT
Rose
I’m sitting in my RV, visualizing every detail of the show to come. The exact turns I need to take. The pitch and whine of the engine. The smell of exhaust. It’s my first performance since I got out of the hospital and came home to Texas. The first off-season show of the year. And it’s the first time I haven’t felt the swell of excitement for the metal cage that’s been my home for the last decade.
Usually, I’m buzzing to perform. The first shows after a few weeks off are always my favorite, because they’re the closest it will ever feel to that fateful day when I rode the Globe of Death for the very first time. I was only sixteen. I remember my hand trembling as I firmed my grip on the handle of my dirt bike and crept forward until I entered the metal cage. I’d been working for the circus for a year by that point, doing all the jobs I could possibly volunteer myself for, no matter how shitty they were or how long they took. I begged José for that chance in the cage. There wasn’t anything to prove I could do it, no credentials other than I knew how to ride a motorcycle. I had nothing to go on but guts. I didn’tactually know if I’d be able to pull that throttle back with enough precision to spin through the globe until I was either upside down without losing control completely or chickening out and falling flat on my face. I just hadbelief. And as soon as I tried it and experienced the rush of adrenaline, there was no turning back. I chased that high every time I got on my bike and faced the globe. Being in the cage felt like freedom.
But now?
Now, it feels like I’m trying to squeeze myself into a life that doesn’t fit me anymore. It’s as though I’ve taken the two halves of my cast and put them back together and taped them on. Even though I could run and jump and swim and kick, I’m not doing any of those things. I’m just limping along, coping with a broken heart by encasing it in a familiar routine.
I take a deep breath. My hand presses over the scar on my side. Sometimes, I’m sure I can still feel the burn of pain beneath my skin. Maybe it’s a phantom ache, one I imagine so I don’t let myself forget that everything that happened was real.
Not that my girls would let me forget about them, at least.
LARK: Good luck tonight, Boss Hostler! Thinking of you! You’ll rock it.
SLOANE: I’d say break a leg … but please don’t.
LARK: We don’t want anything getting in the way of your mad dancing skills!
A photo comes in from Sloane next. The girls are standing on either side of a cardboard cutout of me, a photo they took at Sloane’s wedding where I was pissed drunk at the little pub after the ceremony, dancing with an inflatable dinosaur as Rowan sang “The Rocky Road to Dublin.” I’m not sure whose sunglasses I was wearing, but I liked them, so I kept them.
That T-Rex was the real MVP.
Miss you bally broads. See you in August!
I know that subtle reminder is not what they want to hear. August is still eight months away, and they were bummed that I didn’t make it for Christmas. I just didn’t think I could bear it, being around two other couples, especially not the brothers of the man I love who just … disappeared. Especially not when those brothers have questions that I simply can’t answer, because I don’t know why he left or where he went. Sloane and Lark told me what happened that day in Portsmouth at the bakery after I passed out, of course. The blood. The tears. The hospital. The things he said that I didn’t hear when I was unconscious, clinging to life. How I was saved by his hands.
I slide my phone into the interior pocket of my jacket and then grab my helmet and get ready to leave.
When I pull my door open, Baz is standing there, his fist poised and ready to knock.
“Hello, young sir,” I say with a theatrical bow. “What are you up to?”
Baz shrugs, then holds a white envelope up for me to take. “This came for you.”
“A letter?” I ask. My gaze pans the circus grounds as though the mystery might unravel itself. I pin my attention back to Baz, my eyes narrowing as I take the envelope. “How?”
“Don’t ask me, I don’t know. I just work here.” Baz winks and then he turns and starts jogging away. I don’t know if he’s being honest or spinning a lie—the older he gets, the harder it is to tell. I open my mouth to yell after him, but he disappears between two motor homes before I manage to get out anything more than “but.”
I sigh and turn the letter over. My eyes immediately fill with tears.
I take it to the little folding table and sit down, reading and rereading the handwritten text.
TO: Mayhem
Dorothy, Silveria Circus
Texas
In the upper left corner:
Secret Admirer
Nowhere without you
